The volume includes events from the Formal declaration of war against Spain to the Suicide of the Princess of Cambray, wife of Balagny. It presents an outline of the happenings during Eighty Years' War. Famous for his brilliant work on the history of the Dutch struggle for freedom, American author, diplomat, and well-known historian John Lothrop Motley wrote his thoroughly researched and compiled work, History of the United Netherlands, 1595, as a part of his four-volume series. Mortley is known for his works like the three-volume work The Rise of the Dutch Republic and the four-volume History of the United Netherlands. It was mainly the period of the United Provinces in 1846 when Motley had begun to plan a history of the Netherlands. This work was prepared on a considerable scale and embodied the results of a more significant amount of original research. Motley planned to carry his history down to 1648, but unfortunately, he died before ending this work. By that time, he had published, in four volumes, The History of the United Netherlands, 1584–1609 (1860–67).